Accountants to Leaders: Mastering Strategic Finance Leadership Strategies

Megan - 00:00:21: Today, my guest is Angie Paglinawan. Angie is a solutions-driven finance leader and financial project professional with a proven track record of driving financial processes and successfully executing financial transformation projects. She has a history of working on cross-functional, high-performance teams and collaborating across various leadership levels to produce targeted financial results. She is well-versed in managing financial projects and system implementations, process improvements, and leading teams through transitions and transformations. Angie is skilled in financial project oversight, financial reporting and analysis, multi-year budgeting, rolling forecasts, and full-cycle accounting. With more than 25 years experience spanning across various industries, including utilities, gaming manufacturing and hospitality, IT and construction. Angie, thank you very much for being my guest today on this episode of CFO Weekly.

Angie - 00:01:48: Thank you so much, Megan. I'm honored to be here.

Megan - 00:01:51: Today we'll be talking about how saying yes to opportunities, even when you have no experience, and career changes leads to more opportunities and growth. And Angie, I personally love this topic and I'm looking forward to learning about you and your experiences. So let's jump right in.

Angie - 00:02:09: Thanks, Megan.

Megan - 00:02:10: So first and just that we have some idea of who you are and what you've done. Can you just give us a little bit of background on your career to date?

Angie - 00:02:18: I will say from the beginning, my career, I think, set the pace for where I am now. I started out in public accounting. I worked for a really small firm. There were about five of us total, including the owner and the partner. So we had to do a bit of everything from working on small business tax returns, where people would bring their receipts in a shoebox, to I remember one year the mayor had some lawsuit going on, and I had to recalculate the credit card interest on her statement. So, you know, that was an interesting start to my career. But it set the pace on having to learn to switch gears and jump into different things. But I worked in public accounting for a little bit, then moved over into working in construction as a controller for different firms. Later on, got pulled into the utility industry, and that also gave me my first exposure. I started out in accounting and then doing special projects, and that really got me into working on finance transformation and also getting to know people across the businesses, working with different leaders. Also, during that time, I was lucky enough to work for a CIO of an organization, and he and I worked on a lot of process improvements, outsourcing. I got picked for a special project of working on the acquisition transition team. So that gave me exposure on not only working on acquisitions, but transitioning team systems and such in the long run for the parent company and subsidiary. And then from there, just because my different experience with transformation and system implementations and working on different transitions, different companies have recruited me to just jump into transitioning their teams. And that has translated into the entertainment industry. And then also where I've currently landed in the gaming manufacturing industry, where although I work as a director of finance and report up through the CFO organization, I work side by side with the CIO organization, his chief of staff and leadership, and have been brought in pretty much to work on transformation, streamline their processes. They're the biggest business unit in the corporate shared services organization. So really, I'm spending my time right now, not only on the business, but also how we can automate things and run the business more efficiently at a global level.

Megan - 00:04:55: And as we've just heard, you've had a dynamic career that spanned multiple industries. So what key experiences across these industries have shaped your approach to financial leadership and agility as a leader working in middle market CFO organizations?

Angie - 00:05:12: Great question, Megan. One of the key roles I had, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, was when I was brought in as a special projects accountant working for a utility. I'd never heard that title before and I wasn't even sure, you know, what am I doing here? And my manager at the time, he had me rotate on the month and close. And for those who aren't familiar with the utility, I was working in the fixed asset group and that's the biggest area where you earn your revenue on the return for your assets. So big exposure there. And I had come from traditionally the accountant role of being introverted and not wanting to talk to a lot of people. And that manager, besides having me rotate on the month and close, he would give me anything that came across his desk. For example, the first week I was there, there was someone who was the rate case manager, which is the kind of like the tax partner who would run your group. So busy time, I was told to meet with him. He needed something done and I needed to do it by the end of the day. And so I had to quickly pivot from my role being buried in my spreadsheets and, you know, just at my desk by myself to working with someone who was a top leader in the company, figuring out what he wanted and getting him the correct info by the end of the day. So I didn't realize it at the time, but that role gave me a lot of exposure to big projects and working with different team members and leaders across the company and really having to learn not only to balance the day-to-day operations, meaning, you know, how I still had to work on the month and close, but also having to balance that out with working on these highly visible projects with leaders throughout the company. And that really was like one of the best experiences I had working with that group. Another one of my key experience that stands out, kind of a funny story. I, well, at least funny to me, I was hired by this gaming manufacturing company and they were growing. They had just working through an acquisition that they had. And on day three, the CFO flew me and the controller up to Seattle where the company we were acquiring was located. And he instructed us that by the end of the day, we needed to finalize the due diligence on the acquisition, do the final assessment of the systems in the team and give him the green light that it was okay to sign off on the acquisition. And the controller and I just looked at each other and looked at him and flat out were like, wait a minute, like timeout. We're used to working on teams with this and you want us to just go there. And especially me day three of being there, jumping into things. And he said, yeah, I trust you guys. We met for 30 minutes to an hour. He went through what he wanted. And again, I, you know, was still a bit nervous and explained to him again, I appreciated his faith in me, but it seemed to, you know, a bit above us. And again, he said, no, you know, I trust you guys. Here's what I need. And as we got into the company and we're working through things, the CFO called the controller and pulled her aside. They had to jump into these board meetings related to the acquisition. And she ended up being gone with him on calls half the day. And so I was just sitting there in the very beginning thinking, what am I going to do here? It's just me. I don't know the company I work for, let alone this company we're acquiring, but I was hired to do a job. So I went through my notes and said, let's just dive in. So I went over to the main building, introduced myself to the owners of the company we are acquiring, asked to meet their teams, asked to look at their financials and just dug in. Halfway through the day, the controller had a break from the call she was on with the CFO. And we would always laugh when we'd tell this story after, because she came into the room where I was at, the conference room we were working in. And she looked at my computer and I was knee deep and whatever I was analyzing and almost accusatory asked me, you know, what are you doing? And I was a bit nervous and I said, well, I'm, you know, doing what the CFO asked. And I was walking her through what I looked at. And, and she just started laughing and took a deep breath. And she said, oh, thank goodness you're here. I'm so used to doing everything myself. I thought you were probably just sitting here and she was relieved to see that, you know, I was just going through my notes and checking off the different things that we needed to do. And by the end of the day, we met with the CFO and gave him a report back of my assessments that I went through with the controller first. And, and then we signed off and, you know, that taught me several things. One, that I did have it in me to do these things that he trusted me to, but a great CFO, not only trust the people that they hire for a certain reason. And I realized then he saw something in me that I didn't see in myself at the time. And he put his trust in me. And of course he would have been there to answer questions throughout the day if, if I really needed something, but he saw in me something I didn't see in myself and gave me enough guidance to run with things, but also left me on my own to do the job that needed to be done. And I think that was pivotal in my career because I now, no matter what's thrown at me, even if it seems tough, I just pull up my bootstraps and say, let's get going and, and get it done.

Megan - 00:11:06: Yeah, that's a great story and definitely a trial by fire.

Angie - 00:11:11: Yeah, I think that seems to be a theme throughout my career.

Megan - 00:11:14: And with your extensive background in financial transformation and leading cross-functional teams, how do you define the agility of a modern finance leader, particularly in middle market companies? What characteristics set successful leaders apart?

Angie - 00:11:29: Well, I think that's multifaceted. A lot of the CFOs I've worked for, you have to have a pulse on what data is needed, but at the same time, you know, not get lost in the weeds, which I know that often happens at a lower level, but there have been, you know, a lot of CFOs that I've worked for too that, you know, they seem to be pulling at different things that might not be the focus. And the great ones that I've worked with are able to hone in on, okay, where are we going? Where do we need to drive certain things? And so one of the things that is key with that is, you know, they have their data system set up properly. It's always tough, I think, with any type of data system. But what I mean by that is For example, one group that I worked under, we had standardized P&Ls, and that might sound very simple, but there are other groups that I've worked for where you're changing how your monthly P&L looks every other month. And that makes it tough on the teams to be readily available to pull data and to pivot when you're given different fire drills and ad hocs, which we all know is prone to any type of CFO organization. So that's really important, I think, you know, your data set up properly and driven the right way. Another thing that many of the successful CFOs I've worked with do something very simple as they, you know, regularly monitor their risks and opportunities. I know one CFO I worked for, we would have our usual monthly R&O review, but there were different seasonalities for the company I was at. And there were times where we'd have to do weekly R&O reviews. And then, unfortunately, there was a point where, you know, some businesses go through, there was a real strain on revenue. And so then those R&O reviews ended up being daily. They weren't very long and they weren't super detailed, but the teams knew to not only prepare themselves and the teams, meaning who supported the different business operations, such as the Chief Marketing Officer and different people throughout the company. So they were abreast of things and readily prepared to know what the asks were. Another thing I think that goes along with both of those is really knowing where to push your finance teams versus burying them and ad hoc requests. I know it comes very easily to a lot of companies to ask for different type of data, but those who do it very well and run their businesses, right, I think know where we go with this and what information do we need to ask for from our teams versus just asking for different information just to ask for it.

Megan - 00:14:16: And having worked across different size organizations, how does the agility required in middle market differ from that in larger multinational organizations when it comes to financial decision making and systems implementation?

Angie - 00:14:32: A big difference with the middle market, you know, you're straddled in between very small organizations and then that top tier level. So it's really important to, again, as I was mentioning earlier, you know, make sure you have your data set up properly. I've seen so many companies where you just have data all over the place and to get the information that your CFO and other leadership needs quickly. There's just so much data manipulation that has to go on and you're digging through things. So really, when things are set up so your teams can access very easily, it makes that part of the process roll through so much quicker. On a global, more multinational level, though, where it's difficult on that end is you're looking at different regions dealing with different foreign exchange rates. I've run into something in the last couple of years with some companies that something that seems so easy as a date. In some countries, you know, you do the month, day, year, other places you do the year, month, date. And just those behind the scenes things and system implementations that can seem so simple actually can cause a world of headache later down the road. And as these larger companies, many go through acquisitions, which can be difficult at any level. But again, when you're dealing with different regions that have different tax implications and legal issues, you really have to have someone who's across all of that. And one person can't be. So it's really important, I think, at a global level to have great leadership for each of your regions who can speak to each of those areas, especially with something like a system implementation that you're working through across the board for all the different companies and all the different areas in order to set you up for success. I've seen so many times where if just the simplest things aren't set up right, it could cause a world of trouble later down the road where you're doing different patches and fix to get things right. But I've also seen companies where you might have to do a major overhaul for a system, an ERP type system. But if you do it right, it does cost a lot of money. In the long run, your teams are able to run so much more smoothly, not just in the finance organization, but when you're feeding data to other organizations through dashboards and different types of automation. And now we have AI. When your data is set up clean, it just makes things run so much more smoothly.

Megan - 00:17:18: And I'm just curious, but when you start a new opportunity, where do you start? Like, how do you know if something needs to be overhauled or if it's working properly? Like, how do you dig in and figure that stuff out?

Angie - 00:17:31: I work really closely right now with the chief of staff or the CIO. And he says, I'm like a hummingbird. I'm just constantly buzzing around. And so sometimes it's hard for me to rein that in. And I also drink obscene amounts of coffee. So that doesn't help. But on the opposite end of that, I really have to rein myself in on getting to know things and seeing how things flow. So like this position that I'm in now, I spent the first several weeks looking, observing, meeting with different leadership. I think a big area where a lot of people miss is just ask your business partners, what do they need? Like, what's missing here? Where do you see that we need to improve? Because a lot of times as finance people, we get so buried into the data we want to feed people. We're not actually asking them what they need. And so I think that is always an opportunity to figure out, okay, here's where we need work. And it actually, in the role I am now, drove me in certain directions of, okay, here's what I need to focus on. Another thing that I do is I have different people walk me through their documents and show me their files and just simple things like looking at your team's folders or your network folders of where things add. And even just being new and trying to find where data is, that can tell you a lot of where we need to work on some things. I've worked in many organizations where just simple things of not having standard folders set up January through December for the month, you know, each month then close and having those folders standardized. If you have those set up different every month, it makes it really hard, not only on yourself, but different teams to jump in and see where things are. I think one of the best parts of working in public accounting, although it could be very painful sometimes, but they were really good, at least in my experience, on standardization and things set up a certain way. And yeah, it has to do with our type A personalities and such. But it also taught me that anyone could walk in and if they're working on a different area, know where things were. And so simple things like that just make life so much easier for your organization.

Megan - 00:19:57: So one of the key aspects of your career has been driving financial processes and systems transformation. So in your experience, how does the ability to manage change, which is often very difficult to do, and lead transformations impact the role of a middle market CFO or a finance leader in general?

Angie - 00:20:16: Well, I think that goes along the lines as I was talking about earlier, asking people what they need and how they look at things. A big part of change and transformation that I learned helps is that everyone has a different outlook on things and just letting people know what skin they have in the game. And what is it that they want, finding that out and then figuring out how to maneuver around where you're trying to get with what they need. And sometimes you're able to find how that can mesh together. Sometimes it's a little more painful of trying to walk people through those things. But I think the more you communicate on both ends, being a good listener, but also just guiding people and communicating of where you're trying to get with things. You know, as the saying goes, over communicate rather than have a lack of communication. Or at least, you know, that's been my experience working with different leaders. I had one who would just say, just over communicate as much as you can. And so walking through people, the change, whether that's through, you know, emails and different notices and just touching base through that. And also getting your key stakeholders on board for them to work through their teams on where you're trying to go. And, you know, just knowing your audience, I think, especially the CFO role has changed so much over the years. And a big part of it is the storytelling. So trying to figure out, you know, what's the problem that we're trying to solve? And then what do we need to do to work with the different teams and different people in the organization to get to where we want to go? I think any type of transformation is going to be difficult. But again, walking people through what's important, why it's important to them, why it's important to the organization, and how you're going to get there is essential.

Megan - 00:22:18: Yeah, I love that you just said storyteller because I hear that word with increasing frequency all the time. And yeah, I think the role of a finance leader is to bring together different departments and collaborate. And I don't think the word storyteller would have necessarily been uttered in the same sentence as CFO 15, 20 years ago. So it is exciting how the role is evolving.

Angie - 00:22:45: Yeah, yeah. Same here. Not at all. I mean, when I first started my career, we were- Or at least I felt, you know, it could have been because I was younger in my career. We were just pushing out numbers. But really now I've heard CFO after CFO. I've worked under, you know, say, okay, we've been in meetings and you need to present something. You know, say you have some kind of huge cost reduction or, you know, as you were mentioning, you know, that part of this discussion is, you know, transformations and system implementations. And, well, why are we doing this? And my people are already buried. And so different CFOs I've worked with have said, okay, well, what's the story we're trying to tell first? You know, so we get with our teams and like, how do we present it? And you might tell one story and present it a certain way to, you know, sales because a lot of times they're wanting to spend money. But you need to then to ratchet it in because you're using some of their funds to, you know, fund the system implementation. But you might meet with the finance transformation group and, and they understand you tell them a story in a different way because they're a different type of audience. And you might need to pull these levers here and there with them. So to your point, I didn't think that we'd be here realizing the CFO is such a big storyteller. But the role really has evolved. And I think the storytelling has also evolved with the CFO in leading them in the transformation to eventually becoming a CEO. We see that more and more now because they're across the business and are able to interact with the different people of the organization more and more.

Megan - 00:24:21: So, you've mentioned this a bit, but there's obviously an increasing reliance on technology these days. So how do you think the modern CFO can leverage financial technology and other digital solutions and now even AI to drive agility, improve forecasting and make data-driven decisions?

Angie - 00:24:43: Good question, Megan. Actually, this is an area where I'm very excited about. I was actually on a call earlier where some of our finance transformation team and where I'm at an aristocrat was talking about some of this. I do think a lot of companies need to be careful of putting the cart before the horse, as they say. A lot of data needs to be cleaned up first. But that said, a lot of what I'm seeing at the different companies I've worked at and different CPE I've listened to, I've talked about there's a lot of dashboarding that's being done. And, you know, that may sound like so simple to some people, but I think a lot of times, or at least been in my experience, you have these different leaders and they want information and they want to see it live. And when we have things such as like dashboards feeding with real-time data, they're able to jump in there and get a pulse on the organization without having to reach out to XYZ person and pulling this information or that information. And so I think it's doing two things. It's servicing your leadership. So they look at real-time live data and also it's freeing up your team. So they're not getting so busy, you know, working in the weeds of all these things and they can focus on whether it's day-to-day operations that they need to work on or different special projects and ad hoc requests that they have. I've also seen CFO organizations where they're doing things like seeming so simple as automating your monthly P&L decks and they get sent out to leadership or before they do, the data is in there already. And then your finance teams, all they need to do is populate the commentary. I say that like it's an easy thing and we all know it. That's the, you know, busiest part of it is trying to figure out what the drivers are and that type of thing. But again, once you automate those types of things and get your standard information out to your users or just get these simple little processes that your teams are spending so much time on, and we are spending so much time on these things, then you really can get your teams and your company working on like, what's our focus? What's our long-term strategy? What are the levers we need to pull on different things we need to do? And so I think with AI, a lot of people are afraid of it, but I see it as just opening up so much time for our teams and our leaders to focus on what we really need to look at to grow the business, make cost reductions, and look further down the road, one year, three years, five years of what we need to be doing and how we can get there rather than getting buried in just data and numbers.

Megan - 00:27:29: I totally agree. I feel like accounting has been short-staffed and overworked for so many years that automation is a blessing.

Angie - 00:27:37: Yeah, one of the CIO chief of staff that I work with, he and I is a little joke we have. And we're like, we want to automate everything. And, you know, that's like our mantra that we say. But really, I was just on a call with him earlier today. And we were like, okay, we got to do this and this. And then working on, we've automated some things with the financials. And I'm also working with his team as a business analyst on them on pulling in. They have a very granular forecast and we're global. So it touches all these different parts of different countries in different regions. But, you know, at a very small level, too, we need to be able to roll up that data to the CIO and CFO and get them live information very quickly. And so we're working through that process on automating what is a very detailed and granular forecast. So we're getting closer. But things like automation and AI, I think, are just going to be such a time saver. Because, as you say, in my experience, finance and accounting are always short-staffed.

Megan - 00:28:41: Plus, the more we automate, the more the roles evolve and become more interesting and take on a forward-looking stance rather than just reporting numbers. So, yeah, I think it's very interesting times we're living in.

Angie - 00:28:54: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's pretty exciting. You know, rather than, like you said, just reporting out numbers, we can get to the meat of things. And that's where the fun stuff is.

Megan - 00:29:04: And when leading financial projects in fast-paced environments, what strategies do you use to ensure that your teams remain adaptable and responsive to sudden changes, whether that be in the business or in global markets in general?

Angie - 00:29:19: I think it goes back to, you know, as we're talking throughout this conversation, the more you get things standardized and automated for your day-to-day tasks, even things as simple as journal entries and reconciliations. One of the teams that I worked with, they found a way to automate a lot of the reconciliations that they were spending time on month to month. And then that way they were able to move quickly and adapt to different ad hoc requests that we had. Or, you know, if say the CFO said, hey, we're changing this five-year forecast, true story. We need to add $30 million in revenue and figure out where it's coming from. And so when you have your standard processes set up, and another thing is you cross-train your teams. And so everyone knows a little piece of someone else's job. So when you have to pluck certain people out and work on things, or you have to jump into that next fire drill and find that $30 million, you have the bandwidth to do that. Because again, as we just said, we're always short-staffed. So if you are cross-trained within your teams, you are automated, you make everything as automated, as simple as possible for your day-to-day, then you have that time that you can free up and the bandwidth to jump into different things as they're thrown at you.

Megan - 00:30:46: And middle market companies often get caught between the flexibility of being a smaller company and the complexity of being a large enterprise. So how can CFOs in this space navigate the challenges of walking this line while ensuring their companies can scale effectively and still remain agile and lessen the bureaucracy?

Angie - 00:31:06: I think it's similar to the other discussions we were having. Again, automate and standardize things. But like you said, it's a very fine balance because you have smaller teams. A company I worked at earlier in my career, and it was mid-size. And that was actually one of my first experiences on a financial system implementation. The CFO had the foresight to know that I live in Las Vegas. And so it was at the time when Vegas started booming and it was a construction company and they laid out all the sidewalks for all the residential communities that were being pushed out. And so he knew we were going from the small mom and pop operation to we were going to be making tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. And the systems weren't built to handle that. And so that's part of the reason I was brought on board. And it was a hard undertaking to have this small staff who's doing their daily jobs and have to learn a new system. And we had to get a buy-in from different people on why. But once we got that set up, actually one of the team members, the AR person who fought me tooth and nail on setting up this system, she actually was one of its biggest advocates because when leadership would ask her for different things, she was able to get to those rather than having to manually deal with things in the system. And setting up your system is just one part of it, but the reporting that came out of it and the data that they had available that we were able to pivot quickly when the owner or the bank or someone needed that information from us. And he was also very keen about training me and others on different things throughout the company. So that way, again, as I mentioned earlier, you have that bandwidth when you need to pull someone into a different type of project or look at things, you have someone else who could step in at least part-time for that role. And that way, the CFO and whomever on the team is helping him or her with that fire drill or project or whatever, that they are available and can be full force on that for the time needed.

Megan - 00:33:26: And last question, and we've touched on this along the way, but looking forward, how do you see the role of CFO evolving in the next three to five years?

Angie - 00:33:36: I think it's going to be more of the storytelling as we talked about, although it's transformed into some of that over the years. I think it's even growing more in that direction, especially with all the data that's out there. Different parts of the organization are really looking to the CFO organizations, the finance and accounting teams of where's this data and what does that mean to me? And so I think it's going to just shift even more of that direction of the CFO organization showing people not only here's the data, but here's the different ways we could slice and dice it for you. One of the great examples of the company that I'm at now, one of the finance transformation automation teams, I think received an award. I can't remember, it's like Google or somewhere big like that because they've created internal dashboarding and an internal AI tool that the different business leaders can access information. So rather than people working on things daily, that information is not only available, you know, to different high-level leaders, but executive leaders such as like our CFO or the CEO, where they could really get a pulse on what's going on with the company and then decide who key in the business that they need to meet with to address these different things that are going on live real time with the organization.

Megan - 00:35:05: Angie, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Angie - 00:35:07: Thank you so much for having me, Megan.

Megan - 00:35:10: Yeah, I really enjoyed speaking with you. And thank you so much for finding the time to be here with us today to share your experience and knowledge. And I wish you all of the best. And to our listeners, please tune in next week. And until then, take care.